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In 1888, in preparation for the Exposition Universelle in Paris the following year, Albert Bierstadt began work on the last of his large Western panoramas and his most important late painting, The Last of the Buffalo. He chose as his subject the wholesale destruction of the once-plentiful herds of buffalo, which by this time had been reduced to a few hundred animals still roaming the plains. That they did not become extinct is largely a result of the efforts of William T. Hornaday, chief taxidermist for the Smithsonian Institution; he instituted a campaign to save the buffalo, including grazing some of them on the grounds of the Smithsonian. Although rooted in this atmosphere of concern for the perilous state of the buffalo, Bierstadt’s painting nevertheless is a romantic vision of an earlier era when the buffalo were still plentiful; the Indians roamed freely; and without guns, the two were evenly matched in combat. The location of the scene is believed to be the foot of the Wind River Mountains in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. . . .
:: Dare Myers Hartwell, Conservator Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is available for purchase in the Corcoran Shop. :: Click here to purchase this catalog online
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